EU governments will make a final push this week to toughen the bloc’s negotiating position ahead of the opening of trade talks with the UK.
Ambassadors from the EU’s 27 nations will meet on Monday to discuss a fresh draft of the union’s mandate, which will guide the European Commission’s approach to future relationship negotiations with Britain that are set to kick off next week.
The two sides are approaching the talks will very different visions of what that relationship should look like, with the UK emphasising its desire to break free from EU rules and Brussels warning that this will reduce the market access it can offer. Diplomats said that the main outstanding issue for the EU mandate was the regulatory demands that the bloc will attach to a tariff-free, quota-free trade deal with Britain.
Brussels’s original draft of the mandate, circulated earlier this month, said that the UK should have to stay in line with EU environmental and labour market rules as they stand at the end of this year, and that it should also have to continue applying EU restrictions on state aid.
Britain has already slammed those demands as unacceptable, but Paris and other EU nations have been working over recent weeks to stiffen them, in order to make sure that the “level playing field” of common rules endures over time.
France has gone the furthest in calling for UK companies to be required to stay in line with EU rules as they evolve over the years to come. But EU diplomats stress that other countries also have concerns about the level playing field being too static.
The diplomats noted that the EU had big plans to toughen its environmental legislation in the years ahead, and that this would place new regulatory obligations on European companies. Governments are adamant that this must not be allowed to lead to an unfair competitive advantage for British companies.
The latest draft of the mandate does not go as far as requiring “dynamic alignment” of environmental and labour market rules — a term implying that Britain would have to stay completely in line with future changes to EU laws.
Instead the paper, circulated by the EU Council on Friday, contains more general language saying that the level playing field must not become obsolete over the years to come.
The text says that “the envisaged agreement should uphold the common high standards, and corresponding high standards over time”. It says this is needed to “ensure a sustainable and long-lasting relationship”.
EU officials said that the text implied that future EU and UK rules would evolve in a similar way, without necessarily needing to be exactly the same. It would be for British and EU negotiators to figure out exactly how this would work.
The bloc is hoping that the ambassadors’ meeting will pave the way for EU affairs ministers to sign off the mandate at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.
Diplomats said it was unclear at this stage whether ambassadors would be able to agree on the draft, or whether ministers would need to negotiate the final details. The UK is also set to unveil its detailed negotiating stance this week.
